Ekko/Development
Ekko's Designer |narrative = |artwork = Rachel J. Corey Gutter Rat (Xu Cheng, Alex Flores) |visual = Edmundo 'odnumde' Sanchez Vadim Bakhlychev Gabriel Yeganyan Geoffroy Thoorens Alexandr 'LittleDruid' Pechenkin Seung 'kse' Eun Kim Nancy Kim Ryan Ribot |sound = 'Scherzophrenia' |voice = Antony Del Rio }} Champion Reveal: Ekko, the Boy Who Shattered Time We're about to send League's next champion out to PBE! a powerful skirmishing assassin who thrives in extended fights, using his and crowd control to and enemies as he whittles down his targets. And if he starts to lose a fight, the brilliant boy from Zaun can time a little and try again. Champion Reveal: Ekko, the Boy Who Shattered Time ;Abilities I= ;Z-Drive Resonance Ekko's damaging spells and attacks build up Resonance stacks on his enemies. Every third attack against the same target triggers Ekko's passive, dealing bonus damage and his enemy. If he triggers his passive on an enemy champion, Ekko also gains a strong buff. |-|Q= ;Timewinder Ekko throws a device in a target direction, damaging all enemies along its path. Once it reaches max distance or hits an enemy champion, the device expands, creating a field that all enemy and neutral units. After a moment, the device contracts and rushes back to Ekko, dealing extra damage to all enemies in its path. |-|W= ;Parallel Convergence * Ekko's basic attacks deal bonus damage to . * Ekko opens a time rift, creating an alternate reality copy of him that tosses a device to a target location. After a delay, the device expands into a broad zone. If Ekko enters the sphere, it detonates, granting him a shield while all enemies inside. |-|E= ;Phase Dive Ekko dashes a fixed distance towards a target area. Once his initial dash has ended, Ekko gains greatly increased range on his next basic attack, and blinks to his target to deal damage and apply on-hit and spell effects. |-|R= ;Chronobreak Ekko rewinds time, briefly turning untargetable and invulnerable before reappearing wherever he was a few seconds ago. Once he reappears, Ekko recovers over those few seconds while dealing tons of damage to all nearby enemies. ;Laning Ekko's early game revolves around his ability to create windows of opportunity with . Its decent range and sheer size makes it a powerful zoning and generation tool, although if Ekko isn't judicious with his casts, he'll quickly run both out of mana and into trouble. Aside from farming, Ekko's also provides poke against his lane opponent, particularly when he , repositioning himself to strike his target with both rounds of . Smart positioning should gift Ekko with a perfect window to hustle in with blink and pressure his target with mounting stacks. And, after diving on top of his opponent and triggering his , Ekko can simply run out, making the most of his boost as he heads to safety. Ekko's role as a solo lane skirmisher becomes increasingly apparent as he starts leveling up and unlocking his full repertoire of abilities. Accurate casts - especially used against enemies slowed by - give him great trading windows: landing it on his lane opponent gives Ekko the chance to in and trigger stun for a couple of free attacks. Even if his target avoids the crowd control, they'll still have a hard time successfully trading thanks to shield. Once his opponents see potential power of the ability, Ekko can get psychological, using his casts to zone his enemies away from last hitting or force them towards an approaching jungler. He can even wrangle a couple of defensive uses out of , like triggering the ability's explosion just so he can shield himself from otherwise lethal damage, or casting the ability directly on himself as enemy junglers come in to gank. This forces his would-be killers to choose between backing off, and stunning themselves within arm's reach of the boy from Zaun. Ekko's skirmishing and trading turns stronger still after he unlocks , gifting him the chance to heal up and try again after unfavorable trades, or use the ability to blink inside stun sphere to trick his lane opponent. comes packed with plenty of utility, too - if he's nimble enough, Ekko can simply hit his to escape from deadly gank situations, or just return to lane if he's a speedy shopper after . ;Skirmishing Ekko lacks the raw power to burst his targets down, so he relies more on his cunning than his strength. As the two teams start gathering, he needs to look for opportunities to skirmish, harassing and chipping away at his targets from relative safety. an important component here, offering Ekko his best method for developing his stacks as his enemies group. All the same, he has to be careful to avoid being poked out himself or caught by enemy crowd control abilities - as slippery as Ekko is, he's not a resilient champ, and will quickly bite the dust once caught. But if a pick opportunity presents itself - if an enemy is already wounded or they're far enough away from their disruptive allies - then Ekko has all the tools, gadgets and gizmos he needs to get in, secure the kill and fall back in relative safety. Here's where comes in. By placing the ability's sphere between his target and their allies, Ekko effectively zones them, forcing them to either move farther from safety, or willingly enter into Ekko's trap. Either way, an accurate should slow the target enough for the boy from Zaun to in and start bludgeoning his target. Once he's reduced their health enough, Ekko's damage amps up pretty significantly thanks to passive, making low health enemies especially enticing. And once he's done his work, he needs to quickly make his way to safety; if he's up past his neck in trouble, he can push his big red button and to reappear with his team. ;Teamfights Ekko takes on a different role in large-scale teamfights, thriving in situations when he can follow up on high-impact area of effect abilities. After setting up his team's initiation with , Ekko follows up with before into his sphere to stun his enemies and shield his butt before he starts swinging his club. Then it's a matter of timing: Ekko needs to carefully balance the level of his health against the impact of his . Trigger too early and he'll end up back in his own team's backline; too late and he'll already have met his maker. But when Ekko correctly, when he reappears in the heart of the enemy team with topped up health and a devastating amount of area of effect damage, then his team all but wins the fight. ;Synergy Gnar and Ekko work together well enough - their combined long range slowing damage from and fully capable of poking down most enemy champions. But Ekko thrives when Gnar goes , blinking in with to follow up the crowd control train with before casting to rewind time and roll in once again on whoever Mega Gnar hasn't yet battered to death. |badchamp1= LeBlanc |badtext1= a powerful tool, particularly when Ekko plans his use ahead of time. However, in the face of high damage, bursty champions, Ekko can often lose trades so hard that he's forced to use just to stay alive. LeBlanc, with her high damage and low cooldown abilities, can often force Ekko's hand, removing one of his strongest trading abilities from his repertoire for a good while. |goodchamp2= Vi |goodtext2= Similar to Gnar, Vi has plenty of that Ekko can take advantage of as he in to claim kills. However, unlike the Missing Link, Vi packs a punch of her own, and when she starts roaming with Ekko, the two pair into a devastating duo with enough firepower and crowd control to take down most enemies with ease. |badchamp2= Fiora |badimage2= FioraSquare old.png |badtext2= Ekko copes just fine when he can actually in and out of combat, applying damage before suffering too much back. Unfortunately for him, Fiora has a few ways to overpower the trade and win most duels. After parrying Ekko's gambit with , Fiora can force the fight with two casts of before using to hack poor Ekko down. Even if Ekko tries to away, Fiora can stick with him with a well-timed . |goodchamp3= Draven |goodtext3= Draven might be one of League's most powerful early game marksmen, but he sorely lacks the crowd control he needs to hold his enemies down as he slings his . That's where Ekko comes in. By roaming bot and placing between the enemy marksman and their tower, Ekko forces his target towards Draven or into his trap. And even if they somehow sidestep , Ekko can fire out for a heavy slow. Either way, the blood brother with the glorious 'stache gets a kill. |badchamp3= Graves |badimage3= GravesSquare Censored.png |badtext3= and both slow enough for Ekko to catch up with most enemies, but Graves has a few tricks up his shotgun to help him keep distance and win trades. will effectively nullify Ekko's if placed correctly, and even when Ekko's able to close range, Graves can fire out a max damage before using to kite away. }} ;Champion Insights : , game design by gypsylord In his lore, Ekko's a smart guy who uses his wits to survive the streets of Zaun. I wanted to reflect that in his gameplay by making him feel wily and clever, so I asked myself how we could make an assassin who doubles down on feeling smart. We already have a bunch of ways for players to feel skilled in League: players feel skillful when they land their skillshots, while players might feel skillful when they combo their abilities together in the right way to save their carry. Getting players to feel smart, on the other hand, is a trickier beast. Here's a contrast: players are skillful when they position correctly, engage on their targets and land all their abilities. players are smart when they lead enemies on a wild goose chase and then teleport back to a they left behind at just the right moment. The core thing here is feeling like you came out ahead in an engagement through solid situational analysis instead of raw mechanics and reaction time. Now for Ekko. He feels smart through the idea of predictive gameplay. Basically, instead of reacting to what happens, I wanted you to feel good about predicting what will happen - call the shot right and you get a reward. This is best represented in Ekko's , . The ability asks him to take in his current surroundings and make a call as to where he will need to be in three seconds. If he does it right, he gets a shield, but if he does it extra right by also calling out where his enemy is going to be, he gets to stun them. The time between cast and detonation starts a game where Ekko and his team need to move in just the right way to ensure everyone goes where he wants them to. is similar. At one point Ekko was able to call the back manually at any time during the cast, but while this made the ability feel more mechanically complex, it made Ekko's use of it less smart. There was no longer a contextual problem to solve, and the use case just became a flat yes/no question. Will the orb hit them? If yes, recall it. Without the mechanical complexity, Ekko has to plan how he'll use his , and reposition himself so that both damage rounds land against his target. It's smarter. A second 'smart gameplay' idea we wanted to implement in Ekko's kit was abilities that have a basic functionality, but which can also be used perfectly for much greater effect. Ekko's again fits in here. It creates a reasonably large area that enemies don't want to be in, so at its base level, it works as a zoning tool. Similarly, Ekko can cast the ability on himself for a shield - another base level use for the ability. But in order to land the stun, he needs to figure out how he or his allies can lock his target down and keep them in the zone. Analyze or force the situation correctly by orchestrating your enemies and allies into the sphere, and you win the teamfight. The second question we explored on Ekko was figuring out how we could make an assassin feel good when they're not one-shot killing targets? We already have kill assassins ( and , for instance), so we came up with the idea of a utility assassin. Ekko, like , has lower ratios and so takes longer to secure kills than most in his role. But where he loses damage, he gains large amounts of CC that he can use to win teamfights even when he isn't the main damage threat. Basically, if can't kill , he can't kill - he doesn't provide much else to his team. But if can't kill , he can at least try to lock her (and maybe her team) down so people like can clean up. Thanks to and , he's still very good at taking risks, and is heavily encouraged to take multiple passes at a fight if things don't go perfectly the first time. Finally, you might be wondering why you'd want to pick an assassin who can't kill people. That's actually untrue - if any squishies on the enemy team get low Ekko can and will find and kill them thanks to the assassin threats that Ekko does retain, specifically his ability to select single targets with before using the execute damage on to kill them. is still a marksman, and Ekko's still an assassin - they're just a little different. Media Music= ;Related Music League of Legends Music- Ekko Seconds| Warsongs - The Boy Who Shattered Time (MitiS Remix)| League of Legends Music- The Climb| Worlds 2019 - Login Screen| |-|Videos= ;Related Videos Ekko Seconds New Champion Teaser - League of Legends| The Climb League of Legends| Ekko Chronobreak VFX - Behind the Scenes| PROJECT DISRUPTION| Ekko Unlocked turnable| Making the SKT T1 2016 World Championship Team Skins League of Legends| Welcome to Worlds Season Worlds Season 2018 Event Trailer - League of Legends| |-|Gallery= Ekko concept 01.jpg|Ekko Concept 1 Ekko concept 02.jpg|Ekko Concept 2 Ekko concept 03.jpg|Ekko Concept 3 Ekko concept 04.jpg|Ekko Concept 4 Ekko concept 05.jpg|Ekko Concept 5 Ekko concept 06.jpg|Ekko Concept 6 Ekko concept 07.jpg|Ekko Concept 7 Ekko concept 08.jpg|Ekko Concept 8 Ekko concept 09.jpg|Ekko Concept 9 Ekko concept 10.jpg|Ekko Concept 10 Ekko concept 11.jpg|Ekko Concept 11 Ekko concept 12.jpg|Ekko Concept 12 Ekko concept 13.jpg|Ekko Concept 13 Ekko concept 14.jpg|Ekko Concept 14 Ekko concept 20.jpg|Ekko Concept 15 Ekko concept 15.jpg|Ekko Concept 16 Ekko concept 16.jpg|Ekko Concept 17 Ekko concept 17.jpg|Ekko Concept 18 Ekko concept 18.jpg|Ekko Concept 19 Ekko concept 19.jpg|Ekko Concept 20 Ekko concept 21.jpg|Ekko Concept 21 Ekko concept 22.jpg|Ekko Concept 22 Ekko concept 23.jpg|Ekko Concept 23 Ekko concept 24.jpg|Ekko Concept 24 Ekko concept 25.jpg|Ekko Concept 25 Ekko concept 26.jpg|Ekko Concept 26 Ekko concept 27.jpg|Ekko Concept 27 Ekko concept 29.jpg|Ekko Concept 28 Ekko concept 31.jpg|Ekko Concept 29 (by Riot Artist Alexandr 'LittleDruid' Pechenkin) Ekko concept 32.jpg|Ekko Concept 30 (by Riot Artist Alexandr 'LittleDruid' Pechenkin) Ekko concept 33.jpg|Ekko Concept 31 (by Riot Artist Alexandr 'LittleDruid' Pechenkin) Ekko concept 34.jpg|Ekko Concept 32 (by Riot Artist Alexandr 'LittleDruid' Pechenkin) Ekko concept 35.jpg|Ekko Concept 33 (by Riot Artist Alexandr 'LittleDruid' Pechenkin) Ekko concept 36.jpg|Ekko Concept 34 (by Riot Artist Alexandr 'LittleDruid' Pechenkin) Ekko concept 37.jpg|Ekko Concept 35 (by Riot Artist Alexandr 'LittleDruid' Pechenkin) Ekko concept 38.jpg|Ekko Concept 36 (by Riot Artist Alexandr 'LittleDruid' Pechenkin) Ekko concept 39.jpg|Ekko Concept 37 (by Riot Artist Alexandr 'LittleDruid' Pechenkin) Ekko concept 40.jpg|Ekko Conceot 38 (by Riot Artist Alexandr 'LittleDruid' Pechenkin) Ekko concept 41.jpg|Ekko Concept 39 (by Riot Artist Alexandr 'LittleDruid' Pechenkin) Ekko concept 47.jpg|Ekko Concept 40 Ekko concept 50.jpg|Ekko Concept 41 (by Riot Artist Christopher 'Skeeziks' Campbell) Ekko concept 51.jpg|Ekko Concept 42 (by Riot Artist Christopher 'Skeeziks' Campbell) Ekko Weapon Animation Exploration.png|Ekko Concept 43 Ekko concept 48.jpg|Ekko Concept 44 Ekko Idle Pose Exploration.png|Ekko Idle Pose Exploration Ekko concept 46.jpg|Ekko Concept 45 Ekko Face Study 2.png|Ekko Concept 46 (by Riot Artist Josh 'GrumpyMonkey' Singh) Ekko Face Study.jpg|Ekko Concept 47 Ekko Expression Study.png|Ekko Concept 47 Ekko Time Assassin.jpg|Ekko Concept 48 Ekko Statue model 01.jpg|Ekko Statue Model 1 (by Riot Artists DragonFly Studio) Ekko Statue model 02.jpg|Ekko Statue Model 2 (by Riot Artists DragonFly Studio) Dr. Mundo Do No Harm.jpg|Ekko "Do No Harm" Illustration (by Riot Contracted Artist Rachel J. Corey) Ekko Lullaby.jpg|Ekko "Lullaby" Illustration (by Riot Contracted Artist Katherine 'Suqling' Su) Ekko Poro.jpg|Ekko Poro Promo Ekko Chronobreak cover.jpg|Ekko "Chronobreak" Cover Ekko Backstory.png|Ekko "Chronobreak" Concept 1 Ekko lore.jpg|Ekko "Chronobreak" Concept 2 Ekko Chrono spread.jpg|Ekko "Chronobreak" Concept 3 Ekko Seconds Concept 01.jpg|Ekko "Seconds" Concept 1 (by Riot Artist Gabriel Yeganyan) Ekko Seconds Concept 02.jpg|Ekko "Seconds" Concept 2 (by Riot Artist Gabriel Yeganyan) Ekko Seconds Concept 03.jpg|Ekko "Seconds" Concept 3 (by Riot Artist Gabriel Yeganyan) Ekko Seconds Concept 04.jpg|Ekko "Seconds" Concept 4 (by Riot Artist Gabriel Yeganyan) Ekko Seconds Concept 05.jpg|Ekko "Seconds" Concept 5 (by Riot Artist Geoffroy Thoorens) Ekko TheClimb concept 01.jpg|Ekko "The Climb" Concept (by Riot Artist Jason Chan) Ekko Sandstorm Model 01.png|Sandstorm Ekko Model 1 (by Riot Artist Cody 'Sstrikerr' Bunt) Ekko Sandstorm Model 02.png|Sandstorm Ekko Model 2 (by Riot Artist Cody 'Sstrikerr' Bunt) Ekko Sandstorm Model 03.png|Sandstorm Ekko Model 3 (by Riot Artist Cody 'Sstrikerr' Bunt) Ekko Academy Concept 01.jpg|Academy Ekko Concept (by Riot Artist Sunny 'Kindlejack' Koda) Academy Adventures cover.png|Ekko "Academy Adventures" Cover 1 (by Riot Contracted Artist Gutter Rat) Academy Adventures cover 02.jpg|Ekko "Academy Adventures" Cover 2 (by Riot Contracted Artist Gutter Rat) Ekko PROJECT Model 01.jpg|PROJECT: Ekko Model 1 (by Riot Artist Oscar 'shadowMacuahuitl' Monteon) Ekko PROJECT Model 02.jpg|PROJECT: Ekko Model 2 (by Riot Artist Oscar 'shadowMacuahuitl' Monteon) Ekko PROJECT Splash Concept 01.jpg|PROJECT: Ekko Splash Concept 1 (by Riot Artist Jojo So) Ekko PROJECT Splash Concept 02.jpg|PROJECT: Ekko Splash Concept 2 (by Riot Artist Jojo So) PROJECT Ekko Promo.jpg|PROJECT: Ekko Promo Ekko TrickorTreat Model 01.png|Trick-or-Treat Ekko Model Ekko TrueDamage Model 01.png|True Damage Ekko Model (by Riot Artist Ryan Ribot) Ekko TrueDamage Splash Concept 01.jpg|True Damage Ekko Splash Concept 1 (by Riot Artist Jeremy Anninos) Ekko TrueDamage Splash Concept 02.jpg|True Damage Ekko Splash Concept 2 (by Riot Artist Jeremy Anninos) Ekko TrueDamage Splash Concept 03.gif|True Damage Ekko Splash Concept 3 (by Riot Artist Jeremy Anninos) True Damage 2019 Promo 01.jpg|True Damage 2019 Promo 1 True Damage 2019 Promo 02.jpg|True Damage 2019 Promo 2 True Damage 2019 Promo 03.jpg|True Damage 2019 Promo 3 True Damage 2019 Promo 06.jpg|True Damage 2019 Promo 4 |-|Summoner Icons= Ekko Poro Icon.jpg|Ekko Poro PROJECT Ekko profileicon.png|PROJECT: Ekko Decrypter profileicon.png|Decrypter DISRUPTION profileicon.png|DISRUPTION PROJECT Ekko First Strike profileicon.png|PROJECT: Ekko First Strike Ekko Candy profileicon.png|Ekko Candy Golden Ekko Candy profileicon.png|Golden Ekko Candy True Damage Ekko Border profileicon.png|True Damage Ekko Border True Damage Ekko Chroma profileicon.png|True Damage Ekko Chroma True Damage profileicon.png|True Damage |-|Ward Skins= Recon Drone Ward.png|Recon Drone True Damage Ward.png|True Damage |-|Emotes= No Sweat! Emote.png|No Sweat! Category:Champion development Category:Ekko